There has been an increasing emphasis in recent years on energy conservation. Electric utilities have also come under increasing pressure to reduce the need to fire up polluting power plants to serve peak demands, such as during hot summer days. Electric utilities also have an incentive to “smooth out” energy demand to minimize the need to install new power lines across limited real estate.
Two ways in which utilities can perform these tasks are referred to as “demand side management” and “supply side management.” Demand side management refers to the selective reduction of energy demand in response to peak loading conditions. For example, utilities have for years installed devices in the homes of participating consumers that, under utility control, selectively disable energy-consuming devices (e.g., hot water heaters or air conditioning units) in response to peak loading conditions. As another example, utilities are able in certain cases to remotely activate energy supplies to increase the supply of electricity to parts of the electricity grid.
It would be advantageous to provide more sophisticated control mechanisms to permit electric utilities and others to effectively monitor and control distributed energy resources, such as storage units capable of storing electricity and reselling it to the grid on command. It would also be advantageous to provide more sophisticated demand side management tasks using aggregated resources.